


Kicking, Screaming

by Cavalierious



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Boys beating each other up because they're angry at the world, Canon Compliant, M/M, Pre-Time Skip, Promises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:21:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26648194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cavalierious/pseuds/Cavalierious
Summary: Sometimes it feels like you have nothing left in the world, and you'll only go down kicking and screaming.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 1
Kudos: 29
Collections: Sylvix Week 2020 Fic Collection





	Kicking, Screaming

**Author's Note:**

> Sylvix Week, Day 5. I combined two prompts. They beat each other up, but it's not really graphic.

~~Training/Sparring / Promises~~ / Myths and Legends

* * *

The first time that they meet is on the training field. 

Sylvain’s fingers are wrapped tightly around a lance, a real one because Gautier boys don’t play with wooden ones. There’s no lesson to be learned if there’s no harm to be had, so Sylvain’s held cold steel and iron in his hands since he learned to walk, and he’s only recently started coming back from sessions only bruised not bloody. 

Miklan is bloodthirsty that day, weapon arcing high over his head as he lunges and parries and lunges again. Sylvain meets his movements with his own, polearms glancing off each other. Miklan’s speartip catches the meat of his bicep and Sylvain winces instead of yelps, because Father is there that day watching carefully. 

And with him are guests. Father looks annoyed, mouth pulled into a frown as Miklan laughs, lifting his shirt to wipe at his sweaty brow. Sylvain fingers the cut carefully. It’s not deep, but it’s a bleeder, crimson leaking down the flesh of his arm to his wrist. It drips onto the ground. 

Sylvain ignores it, shaking out his hand and holding the lance up once more. “Again,” he says to Miklan, who’s already taking a stance. His brother is loose on his feet before Sylvain can even think, but he manages to catch the direct blow. 

Later on, when the spar is over, Sylvain’s whisked away to his father’s side and meets Glenn Fraldarius and his little brother Felix. 

“They are staying for the season,” says the Margrave, “and you will train with Glenn.”

Sylvain thinks that it’s because Miklan is too hard with his hits and his father is tired of cleaning up the mess that’s Sylvain when the sparring is over. He’s wrong. The first time that he and Glenn spar, Glenn hits hard and relentlessly. 

But Sylvain’s also right because while Glenn gives him all he’s got, it’s never too much. Sylvain leaves their sessions not broken and battered but learned and energized.

Felix is a crybaby who hates to fight, so he watches from the sidelines the entire season. The next year, Glenn and Felix come back again for the summer months, and Felix demands to train too. Sylvain finds him cute, the way that he runs around with a little wooden sword, tripping over his feet. Glenn finds it endearing, admiring the drive from a boy that’s nearly ten. 

When Felix takes the field one day against Sylvain, he’s short and small but determined. He’s already got dirt smudged across his face and he grips his sword too tightly and at the wrong angle, but there’s a determination there that Sylvain kind of envies. 

He likes his spars with the Fraldarius boys, but the older the gets the less that he wants to fight, and the more he hates the bloodthirsty glint in his father’s eye. 

Still. Felix is Felix, his best friend, his confidante. Sylvain owes it to him to at least sling him around the field. So Sylvain does and when Felix loses, he cries and cries and cries, guttural sobs as he hides his face in Glenn’s chest. Glenn shoots Sylvain an apologetic look when Felix calls him a rather nasty name, proclaiming that he never wants to see him again. 

It lasts about a day before Felix is on the field again. Sylvain still wins. 

These are the best years of Sylvain’s life, he thinks, looking back. The three of them training and laughing and learning. Sitting out under the warm sun and eating the pastries that Cook’s made for them. Late nights of playing Guards and Robbers as long as they can before the Governess sticks her head out into the hallway to crankily yell at them to head to bed. 

They’d pile onto the same mattress, Glenn would open up a book and he’d read to them until they both fell asleep. 

Shit goes to hell when Glenn dies. The world turns angry and bitter, Sylvain’s father turns angrier, more bitter, and with renewed purpose to marry him off, and Sylvain is caught between accepting his future and hightailing it the fuck away at first notice. 

But there’s one thing that keeps him here, waiting. Sylvain’s too selfish to leave him behind. 

#

This isn’t the Felix that he knows. Felix is short and quiet until he starts crying, often and at everything, and loud and neverending. Sylvain’s not looking at Felix, though, he feels like he’s looking at a short, angry version of Glenn with badly kempt hair. 

“Let’s go,” says Felix, all business, a sour tone dripping from his mouth tightly. He grips a real sword, not a training one, and for once in his damn life, he looks like he knows what he’s doing. 

Sylvain’s wary because he’s learned over the years that you should never fight with a cornered cat. “Felix,” he starts, but Felix lets out a derisive snort. 

“I haven’t come here to play,” says Felix, “I’ve come here to spar, like every year before this. And this time, I’ll win.”

Sylvain says nothing as he snaps into a stance, the training field of Gautier Manor long and wide between them. He and Felix have always been close, but right now it feels like they’re a furlong away. 

They fly at each other, Felix’s sword landing a glancing blow across Sylvain’s lance. It’s intentional though, steel sliding along the pole before Felix pulls back and turns, his blade slicing inwards for a cut against Sylvain’s side. 

Sylvain pulls back, angry. “Hey!” It’d been too close for comfort, too close to drawing blood. It’d reminded him of Miklan and the old days before he’d left without a word. Sylvain doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like this angry version of his best friend. 

“Again,” says Felix. 

And again they go. And again, and again, and again. Sylvain should have the upper hand due to weapons advantage, but Felix is smaller, lighter, and faster. Sylvain can’t land a blow to save his life, as Felix dances circles around him across the dusty ground. Felix has the decency to slap the flat edge of his sword across his side, dealing a large bruise instead of a nasty cut, but all it does is enrage Sylvain. 

He’s never been angry at Felix before, but he is now and he hates, _hates_ this foreign feeling that wells up within him. 

“Again,” says Felix. He stands twenty paces away, no longer looking like a boy, but not looking like a man either. He looks tired and sore, circles cut deep under his eyes because he hasn’t slept in a year. Not since Glenn died. He’s only been angry, so, so very bitter and angry. 

“Enough,” says Sylvain, wiping at the sweat on his brow. He knows when to call quits. 

“Again,” says Felix, “We’re not done.”

“We _are_ done,” snaps Sylvain, anger rising in him. 

“We aren’t done until we’re done,” says Felix. “This fight isn’t over with.”

“Felix--”

Felix throws his sword down and tackles Sylvain to the ground with the type of maneuver that Miklan would pull-- down and dirty and not very honorable. Sylvain grunts as Felix throws his weight into him. He pushes back, throwing Felix to the side and rolling them over. Felix flails wildly, trying to hit anything that he can within reach. 

He manages to catch Sylvain’s jaw hard with his fist. Sylvain pulls back onto his knees and looks down at Felix, cradling his split lip and spitting out the blood that wells up. 

Felix stares back up at him defiantly and says, “Again.”

It’s fair when Sylvain hits back, he thinks. It’s fair to hit a person who’s hit you, even if it’s a friend, even if it’s a family member, even if it’s someone that you love deeply. Miklan taught him that lesson early on in life, Sylvain’s just never thought he’d ever duke it out with Felix on the other end. 

Felix fights back like a rabid cat, claws out and hackles raised, yowling in anger as he launches himself at Sylvain once more. They tussle on the ground, rolling over and over, raking and scratching, kicking and screaming. 

This time, Sylvain hooks his fist across Felix’s nose and there’s a distinct crunch under his hand. Felix doesn’t even blink. He lays there on the ground, nose crooked and bleeding, staring at Sylvain resolutely before croaking out another, “Again.”

Sylvain leans over Felix, knuckles bruised and lip swollen and bleeding, and he finally sees exactly what’s going on. He sees what Felix has been working through, he sees how alone he feels and he sees that he’s entirely at a loss. And Felix must recognize the pity that falls across Sylvain’s face because Felix pushes at his chest. 

“Again!” shouts Felix, but this time it’s more like an angry sob, heart wrenching and painful. “Sylvain, _again.”_

Sylvain pulls him close instead, pressing Felix into his chest, fingers stroking through his hair as he murmurs soft words to him. Felix shakes in his grasp, but there are no tears because Felix has cried so much that there isn’t anything left. All he is is a pitiful, angry little shell who only feels things when he’s being pummeled into a pulp. 

And that’s something that Sylvain understands truly, deeply, and with every fiber of his being. 

Felix clings to him, fingers pulling at his shirt and Sylvain lets him, telling him that it’s going to be okay, even if neither of them believes it because Glenn is gone and war is on the rise. They both know what’s bound to happen. 

Later, after the manor healer sets Felix’s nose, they’re out on the balcony of Sylvain’s room, where they used to watch the stars with Glenn. 

“He left me,” says Felix. 

“Yeah,” says Sylvain. “But you aren’t alone.”

Felix is quiet for a long moment, and then says, “I’m heading off to squire.”

Sylvain turns to Felix. “Is that what you want?”

“No,” says Felix, and it’s the first honest thing he’s said to Sylvain since he stepped through their front doors this summer season. “But it’s what Glenn wanted.”

“You aren’t Glenn,” says Sylvain. 

Felix sighs, a soft little thing. “Of course not, but tell that to my old man.” 

Sylvain bites his lip as he thinks, head falling back to stare at the dark sky. Felix does the same, and they both lean dangerously against the railing, reckless with their present-day because they already have no future. 

“I promise that I’ll die with you,” says Sylvain finally. 

“That’s a dumb promise,” says Felix with a snort. 

“You wouldn’t be alone, though.” Sylvain pauses. “I wouldn’t be alone either. We can fight together and we can die together. Sounds better than marriage. It’d definitely mean more.”

Felix laughs at that, low and bitter. But then he nudges at Sylvain, a small quirk to his lips. Sylvain reaches out and brandishes a pinky, and Felix scoffs. “A pinky promise? Sylvain, we aren’t children anymore.”

“Pinky promises are a sacred thing,” says Sylvain with absolute seriousness. 

Felix stares at his hand and then hooks his own around it. “It’s a promise then. We die together, or we don’t die at all.”

It’s a nice thought, Sylvain thinks. Too bad he doesn’t plan on keeping it, because he’s not going to let Felix die at all. Unlike him, Felix still has something to live for even if he doesn’t think so. Sylvain smiles at him, sickly sweet even though it doesn’t reach his eyes, and it’s the first time that Sylvain directs fakeness towards another person in such a way. Felix doesn’t see it because he’s not paying attention. 

“Yeah,” says Sylvain. “It’s a promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> I made a [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_Cavalierious_) specifically to cater to the fact I've started writing again.


End file.
